Taken by the Beast (The Conduit Series Book 1) (27 page)

Something was wrong about all this. I couldn’t pinpoint what, but unease was seeping through my bloodstream, rapidly replacing that brief moment of peace the light had afforded me.

I turned to Abram, my heart nearly stopping in my chest at the sight of him. While I’d ventured farther into the room, he’d waited just by the door. He was stunningly handsome, of course, but that’s not why my heart stopped. His eyes were so full of sorrow, and yet his expression was calm, his body language confident. I could only explain it as a quiet resolve. But it made me more concerned.

“Abram …” I said, watching his face carefully. He was scared about something. “The place is on fire Abram. There’s a mob building outside the door. Shouldn’t we be running?”

“It’ll be okay,” Abram said. But there was too much apology in his voice.

“Please, no more secrets.” I shook my head and splayed my hands. “How can anything be okay? How, Abram?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his jaw tensed. His chest puffed up a little as he took a deep breath, and I expected him to approach me, but he didn’t. I wished he would.

“There’s something you should know about this room,” he said finally. “About this town actually.”

Oh, no
.
Here is it
.
More things I don’t want to know
.

But they were things I needed to know. I turned away, blinking back tears as anxiety throttled in my chest. “We don’t have much time, do we?”

“No,” he said. “We don’t. But it’s not what you think.”

My gaze landed on a crucifix on the wall and a stained glass window that sat under it. That window, with its red moon almost completely colored in—I had seen it before. I had seen this entire room before. But where?

“Oh, God,” I muttered as the answer came to me, as soft as the last whispers of a peaceful dream. “Satina. This is the room where it happened.”

“This is the genesis point,” he said, his voice gravelly. “The origin of the curse that, even now, still envelopes me.”

“That was here?” I asked, moving closer to the window. I turned to face him. “But it was a monastery. You said you burned it down.”

“I attempted to burn it down,” he said, eyes plastered on the floor. Even now, it seemed, the incident still brought about shame in him. “They don’t make buildings like they used to. The fire destroyed most of the interior, but the structure remained intact. And this room was completely untouched.”

“I don’t suppose that’s coincidence,” I answered, running my finger across the colored-in moon.

“Sometimes, if the magic is strong enough during a certain event or occurrence, it leaves something of an imprint on the area affected.” I felt him behind me, the heat of his human form radiating on my skin. “The magic that envelopes this room was made for me. To
curse
me. But part of that curse is also what keeps me alive.”

“Well, what good is a curse if you’re not alive to suffer through it?” I asked as he ran his fingers down my arm.

“That’s the idea,” he answered. His lips traced my hair, settling along my ear. “It’s stopped me from being able to end my life during my darker moments of the last century.”

My throat tightened at the thought of that, and although I knew emotions came from the mind and not the heart, I still felt that honest-to-God heartache in my chest. “You tried to … to what?”

“Shh,” he breathed into my ear. “It was a long time ago, before I had something to live for. Before you.”

My heart fluttered. I felt myself dancing close to a cliff that would drop me right off into ecstasy. It was strong. The way it always was with Abram. His musk, his lips—they all joined to form the sweetest and most seductive song I had ever heard. But I couldn’t allow myself to be seduced, not right now.

“Abram, they’re right outside.”

“And that’s where they’ll stay,” he answered, hands wrapping my waist.

“The fire,” I breathed.

“Won’t cross into this room. I promise you,” he said low into my ear. “The magic here is strong, Charisse. You need to trust it, to trust
me
. We don’t have much time.”

“I do trust you,” I answered wholeheartedly, looking into his eyes that were dark and mysterious pools. “But you’re also scaring me. What do you mean we don’t have much time? If this room will protect us—”

I cut myself short as my gaze fell back onto the painted moon. That was it. The stained glass moon was much fuller than the one on the door—less of a crescent, more of a waxing moon—nearly full, in fact.

“What does this mean?” I asked, waving my hand at the symbol. “People don’t just have empty rooms with moon symbols on the door and stained glass displays with moons to match inside.”

“You’re right,” he said.

I narrowed my eyes at me. “It means something, though, doesn’t it? It has something to do with your curse.”

He shook his head,
but something in his eyes told me I was right.

“Tell me.”

“Please don’t, Charisse. I’ve told you many things. I don’t want to—” He nearly choked on the word. Anger clouded his expression, and he jutted his finger toward the painted glass moon. “I don’t want to talk about
that
.”

I looked from him to the moon and back again. “Abram, if you don’t tell me what it means, I’m going to walk out that door.”

When he didn’t stay anything, I started to storm past him, ready to play this game of chicken, fire and all. But he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled my body against his. His hands were firm, but his expression was gentle.

“Tell me,” I demanded quietly.

He wrapped his arms around me and rested his cheek against my forehead. “This is my last full moon. After tonight, the curse will be permanent. Every night, for the rest of eternity, this will be my life, with no hope of ever changing that. I’ll be this … this … 
thing
 … forever.”

“But there’s a way to break it,” I said. “There has to be. Just do whatever Satina said it was. What’s the worst that could happen, Abram?”

“The worst?” he whispered, his voice nearly cracking. “Losing you.”

I pulled back and shook my head. “You won’t lose me, Abram.”

“You don’t know that.”

I balled my hands in fists at my side. “Well, neither do you.”

His finger came up to my lips. “Please, Charisse. Don’t argue with me right now.”

“I don’t want to argue with you Abram. I’m not the one who cares if you are a beast.
You are
. I’m trying to help you. Why won’t you just let me help you?”

“If you want to help me, then be with me. Please, just be with me and let me do what I’m meant to do. I promised I would protect you, and I will.”

Something rumbled in the room, and a voice echoed through the chamber. “I’m not sure how seriously I would take
that
promise.”

I knew that voice. It was the same one that kept me up at night, and when it did allow me sleep, it was the same voice that haunted my dreams.

But it couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. He was dead.

And yet, the voice of my father continued. “Given that he gave the same promise to me. And we all know how well that turned out.”

I jerked away from Abram’s touch and spun around. My father stood behind Abram, arms folded and staring at me with those eyes that I had come to both miss and vilify. My entire body went rigid. How was this happening?

Well, that was a stupid question. I knew
how
it was happening. It was this magic, the one surrounding us, the one we were—even now—breathing in.

My face must have been a horrible thing to behold, because Abram took my hand and squeezed it tightly.

“What do you see?” he asked.

He knew. Somehow he knew the magic was showing me something.

“My father,” I whispered, my voice sounding weak and small, the way it did when I was a child.

My father moved around Abram, almost floating toward me with his lightness. It wasn’t like him, to move this way, to have a look on his face that screamed of mischievous glee. Or maybe it did. I hadn’t seen my father since I was a kid, and even the man I knew then was a lie. That much was obvious.

Why was I even thinking this way? My father loved me. Abram being here was proof of that. Why was I forgetting everything I had learned about the man?

“You need to run, Charisse. You can’t trust this thing.” My father looked Abram over with disgust darkening his eyes. “He’ll use you up, even more than he already has. He’ll destroy you. He lies. Everything he says is a lie.”

My father moved closer, and my entire body trembled. “But that’s what you like, isn’t it? That’s what you want from your men.” He shook his head. “Is that what I did to you? Did I ruin my little girl?”

“What?” I balked, backing away. “Of course not.”

Abram’s hand squeezed mine. “It’s not real, Charisse. It comes from the curse, and the curse wants me to suffer. It doesn’t want to be broken.”

Abram’s comforting grip did little to steady me. All I could see was my father’s eyes, weighing me, judging me, finding me lacking. And all of this to keep some curse going. But how would me suffering keep the century-old punishment that Satina leveled onto him running strong?

“You need to run, Charisse!” My father’s voice was panicked now.

No.
Not
my father. I leaned in toward the apparition.

“Go away,” I said firmly. “You’re not gonna win this one.”

“Get away from this monster!” my ‘father’ demanded, a cloud of anger storming across his face. His face twisted and darkened, and his eyes disappeared as he bent disgustingly into a dark shadowy creature. It was the magic. It was the curse. “I’ve healed your wounds so you can run, not so you could stand here staring like a fool! Now go away and leave him to suffer on his own!”

It was greedy, this curse. It wanted to strip away all light from Abram’s life, as though it fed on the darkness, as though it needed it to survive.

“It’s me, isn’t it?” I asked, turning to Abram and connecting the puzzle pieces. All the strange things Satina said, the way she looked at me … and now the way this room was attacking my devotion to Abram. It all made sense now. “I can break the curse, can’t I?”

“Don’t ask me that,” Abram said, unable to see what had just transpired in front of me.

“You have to tell me the truth.” I took his unshaven face in my hands. “You have to trust me, too, you know.”

He stared at me, parting his lips and then closing them again.

“Abram! I mean it!”

“You can, in a sense …” he said, closing his eyes. “When Satina placed the curse on me, she did so because she realized I didn’t love her. She said I wasn’t capable of love. She said if I could love someone, really love someone, and have that love returned, then the curse would be broken.”

“Oh, God,” I murmured, stroking his face. “I do,” I said, shaking my head. My eyes welled up with tears. “I do love you.” And it was the truth. I knew it as clearly as I knew Betsy Johnson’s Spring 2002 Collection. “I love you, Abram.”

But then a sickening realization came to me. I did love him. I had loved him for a long time now. But he was still this monster, still this beast. And that could only mean one thing.

“You don’t love me …” I muttered.

It wasn’t a question. My heart sank so hard and fast I felt it slam into my toes. I stepped back, almost stumbling. It couldn’t be. The rules of the curse only left room for one answer.

“Charisse …” He stared at me apologetically. “I can’t—”

But I didn’t want an apology. What good would it do? What he’d said leveled more pain than all the punches Dalton had thrown at me.

“Charisse, you don’t under—”

“Don’t bother,” the shadow magic said. Judging from Abram’s reaction, the way he stiffened and clenched, he could now see it, too. “I’ve tired of you, and I’ve tired of this.” The magic raised something that looked like a misshapen hand. “And this is what I’m doing about it.”

Within moments, we found out exactly what the shadow magic intended to do. The light in the room burst in a thousand little echoes of darkness, and the cool of the room was replaced with immediate intense heat.

We were no longer untouchable. The fire was coming for us, and so was the mob. I could hear it in the screams and bangs that were now evident outside the club’s entrance.

The door to the room that had once been a force now lay in shambles on the floor, a victim of the curse’s fickle temperament.

“Get behind me,” Abram growled, but before I could move, he thrust me against his back. His skin was warm and, even pressed against the wrong end, I could feel his heart racing like a jackhammer.

The stomping and banging and chanting of the mob grew louder. Could I even blame them at this point? They thought they were putting an end to the danger that had been tormenting their town for months now. They were out to a kill a murderer, a monster.

“We need to run,” I murmured.

Abram nodded, but he didn’t move. His gaze swept down the hall, and I knew he could see the same thing I could. We needed to run, yes. But there was no place to run
to
. We were cornered. And the club’s front door was splintering inward. It wouldn’t be long before—

The door caved, and the first of the mob poured in. Five, ten, twenty. It seemed the entire town was after us, all rushing in toward this small, sacred, and (until now) secret room. Everyone but Dalton. He was mysteriously absent in the midst of the fervor he had been so busy whipping up.

Abram held one arm out in front of him while the other circled my bicep. He stepped back, leading me into the doorless room, then turned to me and held his finger to his lips. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, shaking my head and holding back a whimper. What good was this? It wouldn’t be long before they found us. All he was doing was buying time.

As though sensing my distress, he slipped his hand down to mine, wrapping his fingers around my palm possessively. His touch steadied me. The even nature his breathing brought an ounce of comfort to an otherwise unbearable situation, though I still couldn’t explain why. He didn’t love me. It had been magically incontestable, deemed truth by the highest and most unexplainable of vouchers.